South African Reserve Bank

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BoE minutes

The Bank of England’s latest Monetary Policy Committee meeting minutes are out on Wednesday morning at 9.30am UK time (8.30am GMT).

Now that Adam Posen has stepped down from the committee, the most likely candidate for dissent is David Miles. However, most think Mr Miles will have resisted calling for further easing at this month’s meeting and that all of the MPC will have backed the decision to hold policy firm. This from Nomura’s Philip Rush: Read more

Central bankers tend to pull their punches when it comes to criticising their political masters. In public, at least.

Not so Gill Marcus, the governor of the South African Reserve Bank. In one of the most gloomy – and forthright – speeches I’ve read from a central banker, Ms Marcus attacked politicians for “a lack of strong, unified and credible leadership”, which she said was leading to a loss of confidence and trust in officials and, potentially, the system as a whole.

Linking the unrest in London and Athens with a lack of such leadership, the governor said that in such a climate, “those presenting easy answers to what are very complex and difficult issues can readily gain support”.

The debt-ceiling debacle in the US showed some political factions “were willing to take the country, and indeed the world, over the brink.”

Eurozone leaders’ failure to deal “decisively” with difficult decisions on burden-sharing had “undermined support not only for their leadership but for the whole eurozone project”. She then implied that Greece was insolvent: Read more

Events in the eurozone and the US are at the forefront of central bankers’ thoughts, in some cases eclipsing domestic factors in setting policy rates.

So it proved in South Africa today, as the central bank opted to hold rates at a 30-year low of 5.5 per cent, as expected.

The South African Reserve Bank appeared unconcerned about striking fuel workers’ calls for a 13 per cent pay rise, or the recent spike in inflation to 5 per cent from 4.6 per cent in May, arguing that expectations remained well anchored within its 3-6 per cent target range. Instead, its policy statement focused on the global outlook. Read more

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Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS

Claire Jones is the FT's Eurozone economy correspondent, based in Frankfurt. Prior to this, she was an economics reporter in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS

Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS

Sarah O’Connor is the FT’s economics correspondent in London. Before that, she was a Lex writer, covered the US economy from Washington and the Icelandic banking collapse from Reykjavik. Sarah studied Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University and joined the FT in 2007. RSS

Ferdinando Giugliano is the FT's global economy news editor, based in London. Ferdinando holds a doctorate in economics from Oxford University, where he was also a lecturer, and has worked as a consultant for the Bank of Italy, the Economist Intelligence Unit and Oxera. He joined the FT in 2011 as a leader writer. RSS

Emily Cadman is an economics reporter at the FT, based in London. Prior to this, she worked as a data journalist and was head of interactive news at the Financial Times. She joined the FT in 2010, after working as a web editor at a variety of news organisations.
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Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS

Ben McLannahan covers markets and economics for the FT from Tokyo, and before that he wrote Lex notes from London and Hong Kong. He studied English at Cambridge University and joined the FT in 2007, after stints at the Economist Group and Institutional Investor. RSS